I guess I will post in here as my first post on this forum.
Chelsea is a LPS/softy girl and I am most definitely an SPS guy. We met at her work when I was looking at fish and quickly fell victim to each other's ravishing good looks! I have been in the hobby for around 10 years and while Chelsea is new to the saltwater hobby, she has a background in marine biology, plus a good mentor.
We were planning a move to Miami at the end of this year but something came up which has convinced us to stay. We are having a little reefer! Grandma wouldn't appreciate her very first grandchild sailing off to paradise with us so we will stay in the area for at least a few more years.
I got back into the hobby a little over a year ago with a small 1.1 gallon pico aquarium. I quickly grew out of the pico and decided that I wanted to tackle SPS as I had in the years passed. Around this time last year I picked up a 20 gallon long aquarium and began cycling it. Days quickly become months and before I knew it, there was no more room. I had so much SPS that in order to fit any more in the tank, I had to either sell some off or upgrade so I decided to start piecing together a 120g system. Around this time Chelsea was also set on having her own small chunk of paradise in the form of a zoanthid garden. She had been buying zoanthid frags and placing them in my tank and in my mangrove lagoon. We realized that we had a problem when my cousin called me and told me about a great colony he could get me for cheap and I agreed to it, only to look at the tank and realize that once it was at the house, it had nowhere to go. In the end, I had to squeeze all of my live rock together but it was finally situated.
The crafty (cheap) people that we are, we started searching Craigslist for the best deal possible on a complete system. This was the only way we would be able to afford to set up an additional tank while I was still working on the other upgrade. I could use it to hold all of my livestock and when my upgrade was done, we could rebuild the whole thing for Chelsea while everything else goes into my 120g. Chelsea and I put together a very reasonable amount of money and I ran off to pick up a RR90g tank which was running in a state of neglect but had rather decent equipment. This temporary set-up came with a few fish and couple nice piece of coral. It was bare-bottomed and coated with coraline algae but there was enough settled detritus in the rocks to make a disgusting snow man as the flow was not enough to be BB. The purchase was made on such short notice that we did not have time to make a bunch of new water and our RODI only put out 24gpd as it only had to serve a 20 gallon tank. Luckilly, the new tank came with a 75gpd RODI but I couldn't set it up until we were home with everything. We had to make use of as much of the original water as possible so I transported the tank and around 50 gallons of water from Baltimore to Laurel at a steady creep. To make the water usable, we ran the skimmer in the display and cleaned all of the coraline from the tank with water in it.
Tubs of live rock and corals sat with circulation pumps and heaters for around four days while a styrofoam box held all of the livestock with a heater, circulation pumps and an air stone. We did not lose any livestock in the move. After the tank had run a sufficient amount of time and we had filled it the rest of the way with water, I put together a quick sump. For filtration, we used the Reef Octopus EXT200 protein skimmer which came with the tank along with an ViaAqua poly-reactor loaded with GFO. I was carbon-source/bacteria dosing this tank from day I brought it home, even before it was filled the rest of the way. I knew that we could not afford to feel a cycle and a lot of bacteria would die off in the rocks when we removed all of the detritus. The dosing regiment completely avoided a nitrogen cycle for us but the bound phosphate in the rocks was felt for weeks. I moved all of my coral in and lost a lot of color all around but also lost a few frags and colonies which went to STN. When available phosphate in the water column was under control, I decided to add an ATS to the tank as I have always wanted to try one. Shortly before that, I upgraded the skimmer pump to a bubble blaster and added a filter sock.
This is the story of the progression of this tank. Somewhere along the line, I decided to ditch my 120g to make use of the nice 6ft space we have in our bedroom. I picked up a 72"x24"x20" tank to do my SPS build with and have been slowly piecing it together. We believe that this hobby is meant to be enjoyed so we stack filtration systems which compliment each other and stock heavy. The current filtration system could take us months without a single water change and will remain SPS friendly (we do dose!) even with 13 fish. So far the longest it has gone was a month and a half and inorganic phosphate never registered which means it was below 0.015ppm in the water column. The current focus is on automation. A Geo 612 calcium reactor is due to come in tomorrow and the tank now has a RKL with two head units, three PC4s, an SL1 and net module which is all being hooked up. I have also purchased all of the components to build a nice new LED system for the tank to replace the combination of metal halides (150w) and LEDs (102w) currently on it.
Here are a few livestock pictures from the 90, 20 and my mantis tank:
I will update tomorrow with coral and growth pictures.
